I am pleased to present a guest post today from Phyllis Edgerly Ring, author of The Munich Girl. This historical novel has some great reviews on Amazon, and Phyllis has graciously offered to give away a signed copy of the novel to one lucky reader. Be sure to enter the rafflecopter giveaway (US only- ENDED) while you are here! And now I’ll turn the blog over to Phyllis….

UPDATE: The giveaway winner has been selected – congratulations K L ! You should have received an email from me asking for your shipping address.

I had the opportunity to spend time in Germany just as my novel, The Munich Girl, came full-circle to publication this year.

In the previous weeks, as I’d reviewed the book’s galleys, the story’s scenes drew me back into settings I will carry with me always. Some of them have been a part of my inner geography from earliest childhood. Others are actual locations in which the story takes place. And many of these, from cobblestone alleys to Alpine vistas, tiny villages to city squares filled with symphonies of church bells, are ones in which I did the actual writing.

Much like the book’s protagonist, Anna, I repeatedly experience the many kinds of homecomings, spiritual and material, that life brings to us. Much like her, I often find myself in a kind of unbelieving daze as I sit in the same café I’ve known since childhood. Two years, ago, and maybe also five, I sat there capturing down pieces of a story that has always felt more like finding my way toward a puzzle’s finished image than any kind of strategic plotting.

If the remedy for feeling out-of-sync in life is to reside in the moment, then we are all here today as I type this: my child self, sitting alongside my parents; that story-struck one who aspired to go the distance with wherever the writing process led with this novel’s story (and wondering, at times, whether I truly would); and my self today, blessed to have reached a point of completion.

A highlight for me last month was my return to the first place in Germany where my family lived when I was that child, a village on the Main River called Dorfprozelten. On a cloudy Saturday afternoon, as my life reached six decades, I was able to stand facing the river and offer my prayerful thanks at the grave of Herr and Frau Geis, who shared their house with my family back in 1960.

At the age I am now, seasons pass the way a month used to, but in those lovely days, my ten months in that village still seem like a little lifetime. I know that’s partly because since my military family lived “on the economy” in this way, we established much closer ties with actual Germans themselves, something that has played an important part in my life ever since.

The story of The Munich Girl is about many things, including, of course, Hitler’s mistress, Eva Braun, and history from the time of the war in Germany. It is also about the power of friendship, and the importance of our often ignored and overlooked inner life, without which our world careens increasingly out-of-balance.

The novel is also a story about outlasting that chaos and confusion by valuing, and believing in, the ultimate triumph of all of the good that we are willing to contribute to building, together. When my family arrived at the Geis family’s home, there had been some very dark times, the kind that can make it easy to lose hope. Yet within months, we would embark on what we’d remember as some of our happiest years.

As one character in my novel observes: “Sometimes, we must outlast even what seems worse than we have imagined, because we believe in the things that are good. So that there can be good things again.”

Having read The Munich Girl, and having used the services of Phyllis as an editor for my own novel, I can say with confidence that she has written a future American classic (even though it’s about Germany’s past). What’s even more riveting is that it’s not as fictional as one would think, but I haven’t bothered to prove further. I accept that this is the story that Phyllis wants to share, and that’s good enough for me. I can’t wait to get my book autographed, and I have no doubt that I’ll be reading it again, with a map in hand, following the places mentioned in the novel.

I really enjoyed reading this post. I can feel your love for Germany and the nostalgia from your childhood, which intrigued me to read how you tied it into the book. Plus the concepts you talked about such as friendship, that outlast war is fantastic and I can’t wait to read. Thanks for sharing 🙂

I am so thrilled to see that that many people, will be able to read this book.It was an honor to feel the multiple emotions relayed in Phyllis’s book, as well of all her books. Cozy up with warm tea, and a biscuit.You out on your way to Germany, and the secrets it holds!